Five thousand miles away North Korea’s leaders may be banging the drums of
war, but on the western front of London W5 it was all quiet.

Outside the hermit nation’s London embassy in Ealing traffic trundled along the North Circular Road, while two Mercedes, one with the personalised PRK 1D number plate, sat in the driveway behind locked gates and the front yard flag pole remained unadorned.

A diplomat wearing a shirt and no tie emerged to answer the bell, and displayed none of the belligerence emanating from back home that has set nerves on edge across the world.

“I am sorry, I cannot comment because it is a traditional holiday in Korea, for honouring our fathers,” he explained, declining to give his name. “Please come back tomorrow, maybe we will be better prepared for this.”

Andrew Bond, a retired PR man passing by for his daily constitutional walk through the neighbourhood, said he was more amused than alarmed about living near representatives of a member of the Axis of Evil, or Axis of Ealing, as the embassy has been called.

“They nod to you, they seem polite, but perhaps they have been told to keep a low profile,” he said.

During a hiccup in the borough’s refuse collection, when rubbish was briefly allowed to collect on the streets, he noticed Harrods bags and several others with “extravagant labels” outside the seven-bedroom property, which was purchased for £1.3 million in 2003.

“The staff had obviously been shopping. When you think half the people in North Korea are starving or malnourished, it makes you think.”

The embassy’s immediate neighbour came to her front door to say they were “very nice people”.

“I think there are three families, we see children playing in the back,” said Soldau Eiko, who was wearing rubber gloves to guard against damage from washing dishes, rather than any feared radioactive activity next door.

“They used to play a lot of golf, but I think the residents changed last year, maybe in December, and they don’t play golf now.”

As a Japanese, her home country is of course perilously close to North Korea. “Yes there are political troubles and I am not sure about the leaders, but these people are no trouble at all,” she said with a tact that could serve to ease the crisis.

There are apparently no arrangements to leave, despite warnings to British staff in Pyongyang that their time may be up.

One plausible explanation for the embassy’s bizarre location, away from the usual swanky addresses of Kensington and Knightsbridge, is that in the event of expulsion, staff could be at Heathrow airport in 20 minutes, traffic permitting.